


Lord Knows I'd Run

by theswearingkind



Category: Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-10
Updated: 2013-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-28 21:31:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/996927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theswearingkind/pseuds/theswearingkind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In nearly ten years of meeting like this, they've never had the luxury of a shower.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lord Knows I'd Run

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this is unexpected; I thought these boys had left me for good. Written for **miscellanny** 's Sex is Not the Enemy Prompt Fest. Title from "Choices," by George Jones.

The cabin itself wasn’t anything fancy, and Ennis was glad – he wouldn’t have known what to do with himself if it’d been anything nicer than what it was, just a room with a bed and a stove, a little bathroom tucked away in a corner. Living the good life had taken some of Jack’s edges off, accommodated his rough, outgoing nature to middle-class niceties, but Ennis still walked through life like he expected to break china with every step; the cabin had been a compromise, the sole gift Ennis could offer after a string of disappointments.

The mountains stayed cold all through summer, and so even after their most vigorous fucks they usually slept dressed for warmth, wrapped in layers of flannel and denim two and three thick, bodies tucked up close to better share what little heat there was between them. The first wonder of this week was that the cabin’s little fireplace kept the whole place sweat-hot, and Ennis finally knew what it was to sleep naked beside Jack all night long, to wake up with his cock pressed up hard against the warm, damp skin of Jack’s side and not trapped inside his too-old ranch-hand’s jeans.

It was goddamn near the first time in their almost ten years of meetings that they’d had the luxury of a bed, and they’d put it to use that week, jouncing the mattress springs until the frame creaked and strained so loudly that Ennis spared a thought to be glad that Don had mentioned he hardly ever used the place, because Wroe might be a dumb old fuck but he’d for damn sure notice if Ennis handed back the keys after a week with his old hunting buddy and the fucking bed was busted. Made a nice change, though, Ennis had to say; for all he couldn’t see letting himself get too comfortable with any of this, they weren’t young men anymore, and fucking on feather ticking instead of hard-packed, half-frozen dirt made it easier and more comfortable to go another round. Jack had been happier, too, didn’t spend half his time mumbling under his breath about having a rock under his back or a crick in his neck or whatever fool thing usually made him bitch like someone had pissed in his boots, and if that was the tradeoff Ennis would take it.

Their last day dawned traitorously bright, too-strong sun competing with the dregs of the previous night’s whiskey and the heavy, slow-blood knowledge that this was it for another five months. A whole week was a luxury they hadn’t had since that first summer up on Brokeback, and Ennis had foolishly hoped it would sate him for a while, that a whole week of Jack’s company would tire him out and make the parting less painful. But if anything, it’d made it worse, sharpened the edges until they cut, teasing him with something he’d stopped letting himself want.

Jack was out of bed already, brewing a pot of coffee on the stove and staring out the little window that looked out onto the rise of the mountain behind them. His hair was still wet, shining near-black in the sun, but he was dressed already in his Texas cowboy clothes, long-sleeved blue shirt, blue jeans, shiny black boots with a heel. From the back, he looked just about like he had the first day Ennis had met him outside Aguirre’s office, nineteen and spoiling for a fight, but when he turned around, his blue eyes carried the weight of nearly thirty-four years of let-down.

“You’re up,” Jack said flatly. “Thought you was gonna sleep ‘til noon.”

Ennis scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “What time is it?” he asked, voice scraped raw from sleep.

“Getting on eight. I gotta head out ‘fore too long.”

“You can’t stay no later? I’m off for the rest of the day, don’t gotta get the keys back to Wroe until tomorrow.”

Jack shook his head. “Bobby’s got a Little League game tomorrow morning, and I promised him I wouldn’t miss it. I’m looking at a fifteen-hour drive as it is.”

Ennis hesitated, feeling out the edges of Jack’s words. “We could – next time, we can head somewhere closer to you, if you want.” Jack didn’t move. “Reckon it ain’t fair, you always doing all the driving – maybe we meet down in Colorado or something, what do you say?”

Jack shrugged. “It’s your say.” He laughed meanly, short and rough. “It always is anyway.”

It was their last day, so Ennis did his best to let it go. “That coffee ready yet?” he asked, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and finding his feet unsteadily, tugging his discarded jeans back over his hips.

“Nah, it’s still brewing. Be a few minutes ‘fore it’s ready.” Jack flicked his gaze over Ennis, looking like he didn’t like what he saw. “I’m gonna get started loading my truck,” he said finally, turning for the door.

“Jack, come on, now,” Ennis risked, treading on shifting ground, “you don’t gotta be like that.”

“I’m not being like anything,” Jack bit off, shrugging into his jacket. “I just gotta get the truck loaded or it’s gonna be hell getting back in time to catch a decent night’s sleep. You watch the coffee or go take a shower, do whatever you gotta do, cause you look like shit; I’m gonna go load my truck.” He started out. “And leave the door open,” he added, as the cold rushed in.

“You out of your damn mind?” Ennis asked, floored. “Can’t be more than thirty, thirty-five degrees out there, Jack.” And anyway leaving the door open was piss-poor judgment. Never knew who might walk in, what they might see.

Jack turned quick as a flash, a spark of anger breaking up the blank stare he’d worn throughout the morning, and Ennis remembered with guilt that Jack had the gift of hearing everything Ennis did not say. “Ennis, we ain’t seen hide nor hair of another living soul in seven days,” Jack said, voice like walking on tacks, sharp and painful. “And in case you ain’t noticed, the whole fucking place smells like spunk, alright, so unless you wanna explain to your friend why that is, I suggest you do what I say and leave the fucking door open while I’m outside.”

Ennis was not a man to back down from a fight, but it had not been so long since he’d stood ashen-faced in his miserable yard, the passing car on the road like a warning sign from God, and watched Jack Twist burn out before his very eyes. He left the door open.

It wasn’t too cold, anyway – not in the tiny bathroom, sealed up tight, where the water came out of the showerhead hot and fast. Ennis caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and Jack was right on that count, at least; he did look like shit, a week’s worth of beard-growth shadowing his jaw and eyes bloodshot from the bottles of whiskey they’d drained the previous night.

He’d been in the shower just long enough to have finished rinsing the soap out of his hair when, over the sound of the water, he heard the steady thump of Jack’s fuck-you cowboy boots on the wood floor. The door swung open in a flood of freezing air, and Jack managed to say, “I reckon I’m gonna go ahead and – ” before he really caught sight of Ennis and cut himself off. He stood still as the grave for a long moment, eyes raking over Ennis, then abruptly slammed the door shut behind himself and reached for his belt buckle.

“What’re you doing?” Ennis asked, wary. Jack always went zero to sixty either direction, but even for him, this was enough of a turn-around that Ennis thought it best not to assume.

“Helping,” Jack said shortly, stripping off his clothes in quick, practiced movements. His cock was flushed and hard, curving up toward his belly, and Ennis looked at it and thought, _dick-clipped_ , and wanted it so badly it caused him ache.

“Christ, Jack,” Ennis swore, “you give a man whiplash,” but there was no heat in it. There couldn’t be – not with Jack forcing his way into the tight space of the shower stall, barely big enough for one, and not even making a gesture toward anything else like he usually did, just turning, the long line of his back and the curve of his ass a sight Ennis knew like breathing, and though he’d not been thinking on it thirty seconds before, he found that his dick was half a mile ahead of him, already hard and leaking, as desperate for Jack as if he’d not had him twenty times or more this week.

“C’mon, Ennis,” Jack muttered. “I’m fucking dying for it, c’mon.”

Ennis didn’t have to be asked twice; he slicked his cock with soap and pushed in fast, and Christ but it was still the place he liked best in the world, the place he couldn’t ever get back to often enough, no matter how much he tried to forget it, tried to tell himself he was done. Jack Twist was like some kind of tornado, speeding toward Ennis at a hundred miles an hour, and all Ennis could do was hunker down and hope he wouldn’t veer too close. And just as soon as he did, Ennis was a goner, sucked right in, spun around until he didn’t know which way was up, done for.

They didn’t do it standing up real often; there weren’t a lot of walls where they usually fucked, though once or twice the urge had hit them on a trail and they’d gone at it up against a tree. Ennis liked it, though, had wrung it out more than once remembering the first time they’d done it this way, the back of Jack’s neck bent forward against his braced arm, jeans just barely off their hips and ass grinding back into Ennis. It was fast and rough and good, like it always was, and better because it didn’t wear holes in the knees of their jeans or rub their skin raw.

Jack bucked then, like a bull trying to throw his rider, snapping Ennis out of the memory and back into the cold heat of the present. It was a hint and no mistake, and Ennis wasn’t too proud to take it; the tile under his feet was slippery and it made it hard to balance, but he planted his feet and rolled his hips upward, using his one-inch height advantage as best he could. He shoved in hard, harder, listened over the sound of the shower for Jack’s grunts of pleasure until they came regular as clockwork, then got a hand on his cock and rolled him off in rhythm with his thrusts, something they’d gotten good at over the years.

Jack’s skin was still cold but warming when the hot clamp of his ass around Ennis’s cock caught Ennis off-guard, like it always did, and Ennis forced his eyes open just long enough to see Jack striping the wall before the water washed it away. Jack’s head was tipped forward on the tile and he was panting like a fucking racehorse, giving Ennis a whole new appreciation for the meaning of _rode hard and put away wet_ , and then Jack unexpectedly reached back and palmed Ennis’s ass, digging his fingers into the horse-worn flesh, and said in a voice like shattered glass, “C’mon, Ennis, do it, c’mon.” For all that Jack could talk a river into running upstream most of the time, he was usually silent as church during sex. The shock of his name in Jack’s mouth and his cock in Jack’s ass pushed Ennis over, and he went off like a house on fire, desperate to burn out before everything got destroyed.

Within half an hour they were dressed and finishing up loading the trucks, two grown men with responsibilities to get back to. As always when they parted, it was done in near-silence, a reminder of what they had to look forward to for the next however long.

Jack left first, easing himself into the hard bucket seat of his truck with a wince that made Ennis flush with pride and shame in equal measure.

“You think on Colorado, now,” Ennis said in lieu of goodbye, stepping back from the truck window as Jack gunned the engine. “Make a nice change, I think.”

“I’ll do that, Ennis,” Jack said, not looking at him as he shifted into drive. “I’ll think about it.”

But as it happened, they didn’t make it to Colorado. Five months later, and four after that, and seven from then, but they always seemed to end up in just the same place where they started out.


End file.
